Azerbaijan’s COP29 president calls for determination and leadership from all countries to bridge the gaps on finance
At the latest climate talks in Baku, which ended on Thursday, countries made little progress towards agreeing a new climate finance goal to replace the current $100-billion-a-year target, dimming prospects for the main expected outcome from November’s COP29 summit.
Negotiators gathered in Azerbaijan this week for the last round of technical talks before COP29, after mid-year discussions in Bonn ended in stalemate on several crunch issues.
Countries have yet to define critical aspects of the new collective quantified goal (NCQG) for climate finance, including who should pay – the so-called “contributor base” – and how much money they will mobilise – known as the “quantum”.
Commenting on this week’s talks, COP29 President-Designate Mukhtar Babayev said negotiations had come “a long way” but still risk “falling short”.
“Determination and leadership is needed from all parties to bridge the gaps that still divide us in this critical final phase,” Babayev said. “Sticking to set positions and failing to move towards each other will leave too much ground to be covered at COP29,” he added.
Bigger share of COP29 badges for Global South NGOs upsets rich-country groups
Civil society groups belonging to Climate Action Network (CAN), an international climate justice coalition, said in a joint statement they were disappointed at what they described as a lack of preparation by delegations from rich governments.
“The failure to achieve any clear outcome also means developing countries face uncertainty as they draw up their national climate plans, known as NDCs, because their ambition is necessarily dependent upon the availability of climate finance,” the statement said.
All countries are scheduled to submit more ambitious NDCs with stronger goals to cut planet-heating emissions and adapt to climate change impacts by February next year.
Contributor controversy
During this week’s Baku talks, sharp divisions remained over who should provide finance for vulnerable countries, as developing nations rejected rich governments’ proposals to elicit contributions from high-emitting emerging economies like China and wealthy developing states in the Gulf.
On behalf of the G77 group of developing countries, India’s negotiator told the final session that developed nations must provide “affordable, accessible and adequate” climate finance to avoid repeating the problems of the $100-billion goal, which was met two years late and mostly delivered in the form of loans.
“Instead we’re being asked to change the policy environment, divert our domestic resources away from the goal and even contribute to the goal,” said the Indian negotiator. “These are huge concerns for developing countries.”
The G77 group advocated for the inclusion of loss and damage finance in the NCQG – as the previous $100-billion goal covered only adaptation and mitigation – as well as pressing for funding to be delivered through “public finance in a grants-based or concessional manner”.
Green Climate Fund restructures,